Gandhi’s critics, dissenters and foes have not been a major focus for my research. True, Sardar Patel and Rajaji, whom I have studied in some detail, were oft-dissenting Gandhi allies. Jinnah, whom I studied for my Understanding the Muslim Mind, was for a while Gandhi’s ally and an adversary for much longer, whereas Ghaffar Khan, also the subject of a biography by me, was a non-dissenting ally for life.
Nonetheless, having looked fairly closely at Gandhi, I have a picture of the thread of dissent in his story.
During his student years in London (1888-91), after two eminent leaders of the Vegetarian Society he had joined, Alfred Hills and Dr Thomas Allinson, disputed over Allinson’s Book for Married Women, which advocated artificial birth control, Gandhi opposed the bid of Hills to remove the doctor from the society. However, as Gandhi would put it, “Dr Allinson lost the day,” and “in the very first battle” of this kind, Gandhi found himself “siding with the losing party”.
Some years later, during Gandhi’s South Africa phase, a young white associate named Symonds “often humorously assured (him) that he would withdraw his support” if Gandhi was “ever found…in a majority”. In 1906, when Gandhi journeyed to London on behalf of South Africa’s Indians, Symonds joined him there, took down Gandhi’s dictation, typed countless letters, affixed stamps and posted the envelopes.
In Gandhi’s words, he had “toiled for us day and night without payment”. Not long after this, Symonds suddenly died. He became, one might say, a loved bead on Gandhi’s thread of dissent.
Returning to India in 1915, Gandhi anticipated not merely dissent but opposition. A young Gujarati named Indulal Yagnik (who would become an ally, albeit an oft-critical one) asked him if he expected a following for civil disobedience in India. Gandhi replied (in 1915) that “a following will come in due course. But I do anticipate that a time may come when my large following may throw me overboard on account of my strict adhesion to my principles—and it may be that I shall almost be turned out on the streets and have to beg for a piece of bread from door to door.”
Only a few years later, Gandhi’s campaigns indeed found an immense following. The 1919 satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act, which threatened free speech, and the 1920-22 non-cooperation movement (triggered by the Empire’s wrongs in Punjab, including Jallianwala, and by British policies in the Middle East) aroused unprecedented levels of participation, marked by Hindu-Muslim partnership.
Dissent duly came. In May 1921, Tagore urged Gandhi to strive to unite East with West, not merely Indians with one another, and expressed disapproval of “the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people from others”. Tagore’s critique elicited Gandhi’s well-known response: “Young India, June 1, 1921: I hope I am as great a believer in free air as the great Poet. I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”
Wherever the truth lay, all of India was treated to a stimulating and open debate even as the non-cooperation tide swept across India, leading to the arrest of tens of thousands who broke their ties with the Empire and non-violently defied its laws.
Weakening, however, from indiscipline, the tide in effect died when Gandhi suspended the non-cooperation movement because an angry mob near Gorakhpur in eastern UP had hacked 22 of the Empire’s Indian police to death. What followed was a Hindu-Muslim blame-game and a drift towards polarisation, even though Muslim leaders such as Ajmal Khan, M.A. Ansari, Abul Kalam Azad, Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Zakir Husain remained with Gandhi and the Congress.
Top Congress leaders in 1942, the year of Quit India.
Released in 1924 after two years in prison, Gandhi was criticised by both sides. Hindus alleged that Gandhi’s backing of Muslims offended by the Empire’s Middle East policies had enhanced the prestige of “the Maulvis”, who had now “proclaimed a kind of jihad against us Hindus”. Muslims complained that Hindus had tricked Muslims by quietly returning to the Raj’s courts, colleges and councils, whereas Muslims had stayed out.
In his response, Gandhi urged Muslims not to think of Hindu leaders like Pandit Malaviya, Lala Lajpat Rai and Swami Shraddhanand as enemies. Hindus were given identical advice regarding Muslim leaders such as Maulana Muhammad Ali and his older brother Shaukat Ali.
Acknowledging that figures on all sides had on occasion spoken unwisely, Gandhi asked Indians not to expect perfection from leaders. The Ali brothers were “not faultless”. Yet, added Gandhi, “being full of faults myself, I have not hesitated to seek and cherish their friendship.”
In 1927, a year before his death, Lajpat Rai wrote about Gandhi in a letter to Ghanshyam Das Birla: “The best man to learn manners from is Mahatma Gandhi. His manners come very near perfection, though there is nothing perfect in this world. Great as he is, the greatest of us all, he is very particular in his behaviour towards his friends and co-workers.”
In 1936 and 1937, Gandhi succeeded in getting leaders like Nehru, Patel, Rajagopalachari, Azad and Prasad to put aside sharp, publicly-aired differences over socialism as a long-term goal and over an immediate question: should the Congress accept provincial office when the centre remained Empire-run? Dissent continued, but so did unity, and the Congress captured office in most provinces.
But Gandhi’s magic failed conspicuously in the first quarter of 1939, when, with Europe moving towards war, Subhas Bose, who with Gandhi’s backing had become Congress president a year earlier, rejected Gandhi’s advice against seeking a second term in the chair. Running again, Bose also called for an end to the Congress’s participation in provincial office.
He was re-elected, defeating Pattabhi Sitaramayya of the Telugu country, whom Gandhi had backed. The Congress split. While most remained with Gandhi, Bose and his followers left to form the Forward Bloc.
